Chapter 2 - FOUR STAIRSI didn't turn around immediately.
In every version, Lily ran.
Sometimes she cried.
Sometimes she laughed first.
But she always ran.
Instead, when I walked into St. Catherine Medical Center at 2:17 on a gray Thursday afternoon, eight men were standing outside the ICU smiling.
And my wife was unconscious behind the glass.
My name is Ethan Cole.
For most of my adult life, people had been trained not to ask what I did for the Army.
Lily never cared about the title.
She cared whether I remembered to buy milk.
Whether I called my mother.
Whether I took my boots off before walking across her kitchen floor.
Six months earlier, I'd left our home in Virginia before sunrise.
Lily had stood barefoot on the porch wearing my old gray sweatshirt.
“Come back before I repaint the bedroom without you,” she'd said.
I kissed her.
“Blue?”
“Maybe pink.”
“That's grounds for divorce.”
She smiled.
That smile carried me through six months away.
My return date had changed twice, and because of a communications blackout during the final portion of the deployment, Lily didn't know the exact day I'd be home.
I wanted to surprise her.
My teammate Marcus Bell dropped me at the house.
“Go be a husband,” he said.
I walked through our front door carrying flowers and a duffel bag.
The flowers slipped from my hand.
The house looked wrong.
One kitchen chair lay on its side.
A cabinet door hung open.
A framed photograph of Lily and me had shattered near the hallway.
There was dried blood on the hardwood.
Not much.
Enough.
“Lily?”
Nothing.
I cleared the house on instinct.
Bedroom.
Bathroom.
Guest room.
Garage.
Empty.
My phone came out before I'd consciously decided to reach for it.
Twenty-three missed notifications loaded as my civilian service reconnected.
Most were routine.
One voicemail wasn't.
“Mr. Cole, this is St. Catherine Medical Center. Your wife, Lily Cole, was admitted three days ago following a serious incident. Please contact us immediately.”
Three days.
I don't remember driving there.
I remember the steering wheel hurting my hands.
I remember traffic lights.
I remember thinking that if she was dead, someone would have said dead.
So I held on to the word admitted.
At the ICU desk, a nurse looked at my identification.
Her expression changed.
“You're her husband?”
“Yes.”
She hesitated.
That frightened me more than anything.
“Room 812.”
I turned the corner.
Eight men stood in the hallway.
Seven wore expensive street clothes—designer sneakers, heavy watches, gold chains.
The eighth wore a tailored gray suit.
Silver hair.
Perfect posture.
He looked around sixty.
He checked his watch and laughed at something one of the younger men said.
Then he noticed me.
His smile disappeared.
I kept walking.
The younger men shifted.
Not enough to block the hallway.
Enough to make it clear they could.
The man in the suit looked me over.
Black leather jacket.
Cargo pants.
Deployment bag over one shoulder.
No uniform.
To him, I probably looked like a tired husband who had just gotten off a commercial flight.
“You family?” he asked.
I stopped three feet from him.
“Who are you?”
He smiled again.
But this one didn't reach his eyes.
“Victor Dane.”
The name meant nothing to me.
Yet.
Then I looked through the glass.
Lily lay beneath white blankets.
Her face was swollen badly enough that I didn't recognize her immediately.
Purple bruising spread along her jaw.
Bandages covered part of her forehead.
Her left arm was immobilized.
Machines surrounded her.
For several seconds, my brain rejected what my eyes were seeing.
That wasn't Lily.
It couldn't be.
Then I saw the small crescent-shaped birthmark beside her ear.
My knees almost gave.
I stepped toward the door.
One of the younger men moved in front of me.
“Visiting's restricted.”
I looked at him.
He smiled.
That was the moment something inside me went very still.
Behind him, Victor sighed.
“Let him through, Andre.”
The man stepped aside.
I entered Lily's room.
A nurse named Rachel Moreno followed.
“What happened?” I asked.
Rachel glanced toward the hallway.
“Your wife was brought in after what was reported as a fall.”
“A fall?”
Her eyes met mine.
“Down a stairwell.”
I looked at Lily again.
I had seen bodies after falls.
I had seen bodies after beatings.
Lily's injuries told a story her chart apparently wasn't allowed to tell.
“How many stairs?”
Rachel hesitated.
“Mr. Cole—”
“How many?”
“Four.”
I stared at her.
Four stairs.
Four stairs didn't do this.
A faint movement came from the bed.
Lily's fingers twitched.
I moved beside her.
“Lil?”
Her eyelids opened.
Barely.
Confusion.
Fear.
Then recognition.
“Ethan?”
My throat closed.
“I'm here.”
She started crying without making a sound.
I took her hand.
She squeezed weakly.
Then her eyes went toward the hallway.
Toward the eight men.
Her heart rate jumped.
“Lily?”
She whispered three words.
“Don't trust police.”
I leaned closer.
“What happened?”
Her lips trembled.
She looked at Victor Dane.
Then back at me.
“He knows you're home.”
A cold sensation crawled over my skin.
Victor was watching us through the glass.
Still smiling.
Lily's fingernails dug weakly into my palm.
“They're waiting,” she whispered.
“For what?”
May you like
Her eyes filled with terror.
“For me to wake up.”
